Stephan: More good news. The rest of the world has a dramatically better view of the United States under Biden than under Trump. I feel like the nation is recovering from an almost catastrophic episode of mental illness, and those who know us are relieved and excited that the America they once liked and respected is returning to good health.
46% of Germans view the United States favorably, up 22 percentage points since Biden’s inauguration.
The American brand has gotten worse in China, where 74% hold unfavorable views.
Favorable opinions about the United States remain underwater in Canada, but they have improved both there and in Mexico over more than three months.
President Joe Biden inherited a tarnished American image abroad when he took office on Jan. 20 following four years of President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policies and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that called into question the status of the world’s oldest continuous democracy.
Nearly 100 days later as the United States and the world meets a symbolic milestone of Biden’s presidency, the Oval Office’s current occupant is overseeing a sizable improvement to the American brand across many allied countries, according to Morning Consult Political Intelligence tracking of global sentiment.
The latest surveys of adults in 14 other nations found that favorable views rose by an average of 9 points since Biden’s inauguration, with the largest improvement in international sentiment about the United States over the past three months occurring in Germany. […]
Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: More good news from the Biden administration. Biden is trying to stop what is estimated to be billions upon billions -- no one is really sure -- of under-reporting or false tax reporting each year by the uber-rich and corporations. Under Trump, as you will read, the richer you were the less likely you would be audited. Now this will change and that is excellent news.
WASHINGTON — President Biden, looking to pay for his ambitious economic agenda and shift more of the nation’s tax burden to the wealthy, will propose giving the Internal Revenue Service an extra $80 billion and more authority over the next 10 years to help crack down on tax evasion by high-earners and large corporations.
The additional money and enforcement power will accompany new disclosure requirements for people who own businesses that are not organized as corporations — like many law firms and real estate partnerships — and for other high-earners who could be hiding income from the government. Mr. Biden’s goal is to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for child care, education and other programs while making it harder for high-earning Americans to evade or avoid taxes.
If the president is successful, individuals who earn more than $400,000 a year would face a higher likelihood of a tax audit, regardless of how much income they report on their tax forms, a person familiar with the plan said.
Empowering the I.R.S. is one of several proposals that Mr. […]
Stephan: On the basis of the social outcome data, it is irrefutable that American law enforcement agencies are a humiliating failure compared to the other developed democracies of the world. This article addresses what I believe to be one half of the problem, they are inadequately trained. The other half of the problem is the quality of the people who are hired in the first place. Both halves of this problem need to be solved and solved now. Thankfully, the Biden administration seems to recognize this, and has stopped lying to itself, which is the first step to acting to make a difference.
In response to the high rate at which American police kill civilians, many on the left have taken up the call for defunding the police, or abolishing the police entirely. But some policing experts are instead emphasizing a different approach that they say could reduce police killings: training officers better, longer, and on different subjects. “We have one of the worst police-training academies in comparison to other democratic countries,” Maria Haberfeld, a police-science professor at John Jay College, told me.
Police in the United States receive less initial training than their counterparts in other rich countries—about five months in a classroom and another three or so months in the field, on average. Many European nations, meanwhile, have something more akin to police universities, which can take three or four years to complete. European countries also have national standards for various elements of a police officer’s job—such as how to search a car and when to use a baton. The U.S. does not.
The 18,000 police departments in the U.S. each have their own rules and requirements. But although police reform is […]
Stephan: If you read SR regularly you know I have been urging that the American illness profit system be turned into a universal birthright healthcare system, and pharmaceuticals should be part of that. We need to create a system that fosters wellbeing, replacing the system we have now whose only purpose is to create profit.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks with reporters in the Senate Subway on Tuesday, April 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty
A new government study commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders shows that the U.S. pays two to four times more for prescription drugs than other rich countries, a finding that came as President Joe Biden rolled out a social safety-net plan on Wednesday that excludes progressive proposals to tackle sky-high medicine costs.
According to an analysis (pdf) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), retail prices that U.S. consumers and insurers paid for 20 brand-name prescription drugs in 2020 were 2.82 times higher than in Canada, 4.25 times higher than in Australia, and 4.36 times higher than in France.
“We can no longer tolerate the American people paying, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders
The drugs GAO examined were a sampling of 41 brand-name medicines with the highest expenditures and use in the Medicare Part D program, which under current federal law is prohibited from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.
Stephan: I read this story this morning and four readers, including my wife, also sent it to me. They were appalled and so was I. United States' law enforcement is now shown to the world to be a criminal operation. We are constantly bragging to the world and to ourselves that we have the best justice system and the fairest police system. It is a lie, and we need to stop telling it. According to the World Justice Project, recognized internationally as the authoritative voice on this subject, we are not even in the top 10 nations for a fair and honorable system of justice.
Demonstrators hold posters of Daunte Wright during a protest near the Brooklyn Center police department in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota 16 April 2021. Credit: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty
The systematic killing and maiming of unarmed African Americans by police amount to crimes against humanity that should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, an inquiry into US police brutality by leading human rights lawyers from around the globe has found.
A week after the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, the unabated epidemic of police killings of Black men and women in the US has now attracted scorching international attention.
In a devastating report running to 188 pages, human rights experts from 11 countries hold the US accountable for what they say is a long history of violations of international law that rise in some cases to the level of crimes against humanity.
They point to what they call “police murders” as well as “severe deprivation of physical liberty, torture, persecution and other inhuman acts” as systematic attacks on the Black community that meet the […]
